The 2016 Presidential Debates, Round 3: May God Have Mercy on Our Souls
"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world. A nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum. And that is just how history will judge us."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
Well, I wanted to stay away, but having sat through the first two debates, I had to see this thing out to the end. Much like the "Purge" movies, I figured I had too much invested in the franchise to not see what the third one would be like.
Turns out, it was essentially a repeat of the first one. Both candidates hurled talking points at each other, sporadically lapsing into personal insults, culminating in one exchange where Hillary basically started singing "Trump and Putin sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-NG," while Trump responded by repeating "You're a puppet. I'm no puppet, you're a puppet" over and over again.
There were several moments where both candidates talked over each other for comically long periods of time, irrespective of moderator Chris Wallace's attempts to get them back on track. Hillary got in a jab about trump's claims that the election is rigged, pointing out that he said the same thing about the Emmy awards when he failed to win for "The Apprentice," (to which Trump replied, "Should have gotten it") and Trump declined to say whether or not he would accept the results of the election and concede if Clinton wins. He also used the term "bad hombres" to describe illegal immigrants, which unsurprisingly led to charges of racism. Hillary missed no opportunity to brag about her 30 year long career and her record of making families and women's rights a priority, while Trump missed no opportunity to point out that her record reflects no real accomplishment in these or other areas (although he made this point somewhat less tactfully). Both candidates took the opportunity several times throughout the 90 minute long debate to "answer" a question by talking about something completely off-topic. All in all, pretty standard debate bullshit. And then, mercifully, it was over. The last major hurdle for the candidates before the finish line that is Election Day.
So, where does this leave us?
The election, as I write this, is approaching fast - early voting has begun in some states and will be starting up in others in the coming weeks, with the big day coming up in just under three weeks. I'm going to take this one last opportunity to say something about the election, and then I'm going to spend these next few weeks trying not to take in any more coverage of the shit-show that is the race for the presidency. I'll be staying in Austin, TX on vacation the weekend before November 8th, and I'm giving serious consideration to staying through election day just in case it becomes prudent to flee to Mexico. Because at this point, I feel confident in saying, without fear of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, that the American dream has died, as has American democracy.
Hillary Clinton can talk as much as she wants about our tradition of free and fair elections and invoke righteous indignation about Trump's allegations of a rigged election, but I don't believe it. Trump may be a disgusting excuse for a human being, a monster that makes Richard Nixon look like George Washington, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. The election may not be rigged in the way that he says it is, but it doesn't live up to the high standard that Clinton (and the rest of the political establishment) attribute to it. If the deck wasn't stacked in some way, could we really have been left with the two most disliked candidates ever competing to be our president? Could a genuinely democratic process culminate in such a textbook definition of a choice between the lesser of two evils? And, at the end of the day, which is the lesser? And does it even really matter in the end?
I am, at this late a date in the election, still technically an undecided voter, in that I have not decided if I am going to vote for a third party, submit a blank ballot as a form of protest vote, or decline to vote entirely, and therefore not lend this charade with any credibility by participating in it. One thing that I am decided on, is that I am glad to finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of this nightmare. When the election started almost TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO, back when we all thought that Donald Trump's candidacy was a joke or perhaps a publicity move of some kind, back when nobody knew who the hell Bernie Sanders was, back when people thought that a third Bush in the White House was an actual possibility, I was already getting tired of it. Now, I'm exhausted. But, just as every year department stores seem to put out the Christmas decorations and items out earlier, we seem to be starting presidential campaigns earlier every election cycle. At this point, whether it's Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or even Gary Johnson that wins the presidency in November, I just hope that we get at least a couple of year to recuperate before the political machinery starts humming to life in preparation for the 2020 election.
The 2016 Presidential election will take place on November 8th, 2016. Get out to the polls (or don't) and vote for whichever candidate seems the least like an asshole to you, and be sure to tune into CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC or your local news station for ridiculously stupid election coverage all night long, if you need something to bore you to sleep that night.
